A lesson on how to paint a quick face with watercolor. I taught this in Christina and my class in Los Gatos, CA. Christina brought her camera and captured the face lesson.

I got really behind on art class, I'm not on 23 in the rest of school, so now i have to post this embarrassing rough sketch

Sailing lesson at Bosham

"OK Molly, this is a ball, I have spent a long time training Dad to keep throwing it for me"

"Capture a moment of silence in the never ending noise of the world". - Pierre Belhassen

"Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day."

6x6 negatvie scan / Fuji Pro

Grouped more together for the photo.

Riding Lesson - Dismount

Polls are up

Costa Rica, Feb 2023.

So I went to swim practice to take pictures of my sister and got no good ones. But I did take some pictures of this little girl getting her first diving lesson.

lesson plan

Printer paper, HB pencil

The lesson didn't say to post the drawing, but since I like this one, I'm posting it to this group. :)

From This Seasons People by Stephen Gaskin

An Eton College student running past the door of the Music School

Our teacher told us one day he would leave

And sail across a warm blue sea

To places he had only known from maps,

And all his life had longed to be.

The house he lived in was narrow and grey

But in his mind's eye he could see

Sweet-scented jasmine clinging to the walls,

And green leaves burning on an orange tree.

He spoke of the lands he longed to visit,

Where it was never drab or cold.

I couldn't understand why he never left,

And shook off the school's stranglehold.

Then halfway through his final term

He took ill and never returned,

And he never got to that place on the map

Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.

The maps were redrawn on the classroom wall;

His name was forgotten, it faded away.

But a lesson he never knew he taught

Is with me to this day.

I travel to where the green leaves burn

To where the ocean's glass-clear and blue,

To all those places my teacher taught me to love

But which he never knew.

Ears

You may have thought I didn't see,

Or that I hadn't heard,

Life lessons that you taught to me,

But I got every word.

Perhaps you thought I missed it all,

And that we'd grow apart,

But Dad, I picked up everything,

It's written on my heart.

Without you, Dad, I wouldn't be

The man I am today;

You built a strong foundation

No one can take away.

I've grown up with your values,

And I'm very glad I did;

So here's to you, dear father,

From your forever grateful kid.

The first lesson of the online course this year with the main teacher Willowing (Tam) It is a fairy art mother.

Hotel Bougainvillea, Santo Domingo, Costa Rica.

In October 2017 I was taking a Coursera class about photography. Learning how to take this kind of photograph was part of one week's lesson.

IT’S 7:30AM in a small AirBnb in the sleepy mill town of Millinocket, Maine. It’s a gray and miserable day, low 60’s with light rain, as my dad would call it, “Good old Irish Weather.” And I don’t yet know it, but I have just violated one of the golden rules of railfanning.

My friend Liam and I had come up to Penobscot County to check several things off the bucket list, and we’ve had a successful, yet grueling four days running up from NYC and around the whole of northern Maine. For our last full day up north, we had one last thing to catch: New Brunswick Southern. Liam had proposed a 5am wakeup call to catch 905’s run from Brownsville Junction to Mattawamkeag and back. A friend of ours had tipped us off the crew would go on-duty around 6am, run to Mattawamkeag, pick up cars, and run back. After three straight 14+ hour days with 5am wake up calls, I was frankly exhausted and begged for us to go straight for Mattawamkeag to get an extra hour of sleep. Liam at this point had much more experience in the Class II/III chasing department than I did, and rightly pointed out it would be worth it to watch them leave Brownsville. But out of pity he relented. After all I reasoned, we would get almost no light with cloud cover at 6:30am, so we may as well just shoot the return run. As long as we got to Mattawamkeag in time, what could go wrong?

What could go wrong?

Now I may be an atheist, but some higher authority heard that and saw an opportunity that was too good to pass up. As we turned up in Mattawamkeag and saw a small yard completely devoid of railcars.

Fuck.

We immediately hop back in the car and race all the way back to Brownsville Junction and are greeted with not an engine in sight. And thus, my insistence to get just a little bit of sleep starts to set in the delusion. Is 905 even running today? What if it ran somewhere unexpected this morning? The endless possibilities rear their ugly heads like a Hydra, constantly multiplying, feeding off each other. I don’t even know why, but we decide to drive a few miles down the line to the edge of Schoodic Lake. As we near the crossing, we think we hear a horn. We burst out of the car into a boat launch parking lot, cameras in hand. A lone fisherman sees our commotion and yells over to us,

“What are you all trying to see?”

Liam yells back, “The train!”

“Oh yeah, it just went through about two minutes ago!”

—————————————————————

I don’t remember if Liam and I even spoke on the car ride back to Millinocket. I had played my hand in Vegas and unsurprisingly, lost. Our morale was shot. We had no idea if anything else was running today. We may have to shelve NBSR for another trip.

Thankfully, whatever deity is out there decided to take pity on us, and we pulled up to Millinocket Yard to see the 910 crew building a train to take out around 1. The shots attached are grainy film photos from that chase, when I decided to finish my FM11’s roll of film getting them crossing ME-11 southbound on the Millinocket Sub. The weather that day was almost mystical, with a light mist and fog blanketing the hills and forests, every bend and turn opening up ahead of us like something out of Harry Potter. It was a redeeming chase, and we went back to our BnB that night with a fully checked list. And it taught me a valuable railfanning lesson: Do not risk yourself by tempting the fates.

While I am certainly nowhere near as well travelled as some of my peers, this hobby has taken me to places I would never have conventionally gone. The states, counties, cities, towns, and vistas I have had the opportunity to visit, even in my own backyard, in just a few short years have been an incredible experience. Recently when I open the news and social media, I can’t help but wonder if people see the same country that I do. How could people possibly be so hateful towards such a breathtaking, diverse, and opportunistic land? My friends at college often ask me why on earth I do all of this. Why do I spend weekends and evenings and vacations in trains, planes, buses and cars going who knows where? And I’ve only ever been able to come up with one response: How couldn’t I?

Always ask someone sober to take the photo if you want it in focus 😉

my wife bravely trying to learn Italian - and our cat ignoring all lessons practicing civil disobedience

Ahhh, the lessons learnt by a seasoned Wide Angle Photographer attempting to use a telephoto lens. This was captured late last year up in the snow fields on NSW, Australia. A major storm was passing overhead that continued to filter pockets of light down onto the valleys. So I attempted to isolate the river stream while capturing a pocket. It worked...or so I thought till I got home and realized it wasn't in focus. Damn!! Still, I liked the composition, so I posted it as a reminder to myself to go back and do it more carefully. I do have to cut myself some slack I guess given the howling freezing cold winds that where tearing me apart. I'm sure they contributed to some of the blame.

Thanks for looking

At the photography course held by Marko Georgiev.

Somewhere in Delhi.

Enjoy your holidays having your kids learn to surf, too!

Took me 15 mins

Cover ebook Review The Music Lesson by Victor L. Wooten in ift.tt/29gQvb0

This particular jump did not end well. There were tears. But there was also a resolve to get better at it, because, as he said, "the flying part was awesome. It was just the landing part that wasn't so much fun."

"La forza non ha luogo dove c'è bisogno di abilità."

Erodoto (V sec. a.C.), storico greco.

Kicking like a champ